Joshua M. Hammondhttp://www.joshuamhammond.com
Hamline MFAC 2016Thu, 17 Aug 2017 17:14:00 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.1Writing Assignment from the Wifehttp://www.joshuamhammond.com/2017/04/08/writing-assignment-from-the-wife/
http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2017/04/08/writing-assignment-from-the-wife/#commentsSat, 08 Apr 2017 14:44:06 +0000http://www.joshuamhammond.com/?p=4222[Read more...]]]>Bromleigh asked me to write a reflection for church last week as they reflect on their core values. My assignment was to consider the statement, “We love children and youth…and we help them grow with personal, curious, generous, and socially engaged Christian faith.”

Here is what I wrote (and read to the congregation:)

Hello. I am a middle school math teacher. As a teacher, I’ve heard my share of inspirational teaching stories. And perhaps you, too, have heard some yourself. If you are a Facebook user, then you’ve undoubtedly encountered the apocryphal tale of Teddy Stoddard. For those of you who haven’t, I’ll give you a brief summary.

Teddy Stoddard was a 5th grader in Mrs. Thompson’s class. And he was hard to love. He slept in class and didn’t play well with other children. He was messy and in need of a bath. His grades were bad and he could be unpleasant.

Mrs. Thompson, so the story goes, began to delight in marking big red F’s on his papers until she reviewed his records. His 1st grade teacher said he was a joy to be around. His 2nd grade teacher noted that while he was an excellent student, he was troubled by his mother’s terminal illness. Do you see where this is going?

His 3rd grade teacher commented that his mother’s death was hard on him, but he was still doing his best despite having an uninterested father at home.

In fourth grade he was withdrawn and had no friends.

Now he was in the charge of Mrs. Thompson. On Christmas, he gave her a clumsily wrapped present. There was a rhinestone bracelet with missing stones and a half empty bottle of perfume. It was then and there she decided to take an interest in Teddy.

When she wore the perfume and bracelet, Teddy told her she smelled just like his mother used to.

Mrs. Thompson worked with him, and the more she worked, the more he responded, until he was the best student in her class.

Each year after 5th grade, he would leave her a note telling her that she was still the best teacher he ever had. He graduated high school third in his class. He graduated college with honors.

He went further, and his name became Theodore F. Stoddard, MD. He invited Mrs. Thompson to his wedding and she sat in the place normally reserved for the mother of the groom. She wore the bracelet and perfume.

This story is often shared as though it were true, but in fact it is a work of fiction that was written in 1974 by Elizabeth Silance Ballard titled Three Letters from Teddy. In her writing, the boy’s name was Teddy Stallard.

But just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s not true. What is it about this story that touches so many of us, touches us enough to share it on Facebook millions of times?

I think it speaks to something that is true – that we adults can have a profound influence on the lives of children. There have certainly been teachers who have changed the trajectory of a child’s life. Perhaps we have had one ourselves.

But there are certain things about this story that bother me. Teddy Stoddard doesn’t exist, and I don’t think Teddy Stoddard should exist. No child should be lacking in food, clothing, or access to hygiene. No child should lack for love.

And yet, when I worked in Chicago Public Schools at 6543 S. Champlain Avenue, I encountered many, many Teddy Stoddards. One girl smelled like urine every day because she had to sleep with her bed-wetter sibling. One boy yowled in pain when another student gave him a friendly pat on the back, because he was often beaten by his mother. And a great deal of my students were hungry.

It’s heartbreaking. It’s systemic. No matter how many gains you make with a child, he will be replaced by a new, somehow needier kid.

The story of Teddy Stoddard, this story that brings tears to our eyes, is predicated on the dumb luck that Teddy happened to encounter a teacher that cared enough to see him through his difficult times. Is that really the system we have in place for our neediest children? Good luck with poverty and hunger. Hopefully you’ll get an inspirational teacher who will help you turn your life around.

I couldn’t remember the exact address of my CPS school, so I went to their website. The first thing I saw in the “Upcoming Events” section was an announcement for no school, thanks to a furlough day.

Do you know what that means? That means many children won’t eat that day.

Children won’t eat. In America. In a “liberal” northern city.

How do we permit this?

After my first couple of years teaching on the south side, I came to be seen as reliable. I didn’t get as much pushback from students when I asked them to think, to try, to learn. They knew I would be there the next day. And the day after that. Many teachers in the system struggled to make it past Thanksgiving. I don’t necessarily blame them. The anti-teacher sentiment that emerged during the Great Recession is even more virulent in urban school districts – teachers are fired at will because they didn’t discover a cure for poverty.

I began teaching classes on Saturday mornings to help students prepare for standardized testing. In suburban districts we have the luxury of saying that standardized tests are meaningless because we don’t need state funding. If too many students fail in CPS the school gets closed.

I had nearly 100 percent attendance for my Saturday classes. Do you know how I achieved this?

I fed them.

If you came to school on Saturday, you got breakfast. Totally worth it for a two-hour review session.

We love children and youth…and we help them grow with personal, curious, generous, and socially engaged Christian faith.

Sadly, children literally cannot grow if we don’t feed them. A child isn’t usually that curious about the quadratic formula if he’s afraid his father is going to be deported. How do we help them? There are so many of them in need. It is overwhelming.

We can start by taking a lesson from Mrs. Thompson, the fictional hero of Teddy Stoddard’s tale. We can remember that our actions can and do make a profound difference in the lives of children. Maybe we can’t solve poverty today. But we can try not to raise our voices to our own children. We can volunteer. We can teach Sunday School! We can vote for representatives that have policy proposals to combat childhood poverty.

And we can build from there, until a child’s opportunities are not determined by her zip code. Until we have excellent schools for all children. Until no child in America goes to bed hungry.

This was one of many chants that my wife, daughters and I heard and participated in as we marched in the Women’s March in Chicago. The event was inspiring, the weather incredibly accommodating. Remarkably, the sun came out for the first time in a few weeks, and the temperature almost reached sixty degrees. It was if Shakespeare had penned the weather, the blue skies characterized the ebullient marchers.

It did not feel as though we were protesting something. It felt as though we were affirming our American values: equal rights and protections for all, love – for neighbor, for country, for stranger – and the power of collective action for the greater good. We reminded ourselves that women’s rights are human rights, that we don’t need to be afraid of refugees, and that we can love and respect Americans from all walks of life; diversity is strength.

Hate has no home here.

I walked with my daughters, and it was the 9-year old who had the most questions. As much as I felt like trashing Trump for being all the things we know he is (this has been covered, and if at this point you don’t think it’s a big deal that he’s a narcissistic bully that advocates sexual assault, then I’m sure you’re not going to be convinced that maybe the president should have some kind of moral compass,) I used to opportunity to reaffirm our beliefs. Every human has value. People make poor choices when they are afraid. And yes, love trumps hate.

And being a part of that crowd – I believed it.

Since Election Day I have been working my way through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. I listened to Trump’s god-awful inaugural address and felt all of stage 4 (depression.) I found some solace in the fact that nobody went to the inauguration and that a Nazi got rocked in the face. (I think I’m supposed to feel guilty about that, but I just can’t when I read garbage like this. There’s no such thing as “peaceful” ethnic cleansing, but I digress.) But the depression was real. It just cannot be that this unqualified piece of human garbage is actually our president. There are so many RED flags. How can we let this proceed?

The broken ideology of the GOP created the conditions for the rise of Trump – perhaps it was inevitable. But I find comfort in the fact that this clearly isn’t what the people want. It took Russian interference, racist gerrymandering, the abolition of the Voting Rights Act, and incredibly unethical behavior (probably criminal!) from the FBI to put this disgrace into office. There’s plenty of blame to go around and the media surely gets some of it (“Clinton seemed over-prepared at times.” “Real Americans feel overlooked.“) But despite all of that, more Americans voted for an inclusive vision of our nation.

I’ve always been wary of people who drape themselves in American exceptionalism – it’s a convenient way to ignore the very real problems that we have – problems of race and class that are structural and go back to our founding. I’ve often wondered why people were so confident that our country could not be seduced into fascism the way that European nations have in the past. Today has given me hope, however. I saw the crowd in Chicago (a quarter million the last time I checked!) and I’ve been watching the pictures come in from friends in other cities attending their own marches. There are a ton of Americans standing up for each other. I am reveling in the knowledge that it’s getting under Trump’s paper-thin skin.

After we marched, we took the girls to Maggie Daley park. While they played I heard several different languages spoken. I saw Americans of all stripes, of all backgrounds, sharing in a vision of an inclusive nation. Americans with hilarious protest signs, Americans watching their children play, Americans enjoying an unlikely sunny day in January.

I do not live in a bubble. Chicago is America. People live and work together and share the same hopes and fears. Walking through downtown, I began to think that

This presidency is not consensual.

maybe America is exceptional. Not because we can bomb other countries into oblivion. America is exceptional because of our diversity. While a good deal of white people think we need to give Mango Mussolini a chance, people from marginalized groups are not having it. They have the most to lose, and they are on the front lines, and they are brave. The rest of us need to get on board and join them. We need to send the message that our progress won’t be reversed without a fight.

America is watching. We cannot despair. If the Congress wants to abdicate their responsibility to provide checks and balances to Putin’s puppet, then regular American people must stand up. We must stand up to the powerful and stand up for each other. Let’s remind this administration that they have no legitimacy (especially since it seems to bother them so much when people say that.) Let’s remind them that no matter how many times they say they’re setting records, that this presidency is historic (or historical,) or that people love them, we are not falling for their bullshit. You like crowds? Take a look at the crowds today.

It’s fair to assume that Trump is having a bad day today. May every day of his short presidency be just as miserable.

]]>http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2017/01/21/womens-march-chicago/feed/1No Parking at the End Times, by Bryan Blisshttp://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/26/no-parking-at-the-end-times-by-bryan-bliss/
http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/26/no-parking-at-the-end-times-by-bryan-bliss/#respondSat, 26 Nov 2016 17:23:38 +0000http://www.joshuamhammond.com/?p=3889[Read more...]]]>NOTE: This is the same review I posted on Goodreads.com.

When I like a book, I try to post reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and my own site. Sometimes it’s hard to think of three ways to say the same thing. So here’s what I think:

I stayed up to finish reading No Parking at the End Times in one sitting. Abigail is learning to deal with living in a van after her parents are duped into selling their house and following “Brother John,” who predicts the end of the world. When it doesn’t happen, Abigail’s parents still believe, and continue to give what little they have to the charlatan pastor. She must decide to run away with her twin brother or try to keep her family intact.

What’s really great about this novel is that Bliss does a wonderful job with character motivation. The reader might be tempted to say, “Well, yeah, her parents are crazy, she’s got to go,” but Bliss writes so elegantly that you can understand her motivation for staying. Not only that, but the parents are not cutout villains. You can even understand their motivation for following some crazy “World is Ending” pastor.

Though Abigail begins to question her faith in God, this book handles religion with care. It’s not snarky, like some books can be, when discussing the topic with teenagers. Abigail does have the opportunity to examine faith through a critical lens – does God really want them to be suffering and homeless? Should they really put their faith (and resources) into one religious leader? Bliss leaves room for complexity in tackling these questions.

]]>http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/26/no-parking-at-the-end-times-by-bryan-bliss/feed/0How to Eat an Airplane, by Peter Pearsonhttp://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/22/how-to-eat-an-airplane-by-peter-pearson/
http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/22/how-to-eat-an-airplane-by-peter-pearson/#respondTue, 22 Nov 2016 22:20:41 +0000http://www.joshuamhammond.com/?p=3876[Read more...]]]>How to Eat an Airplane is the best etiquette book I’ve read in a while. It begins, “If you want to eat an airplane, there are a few things you should know.” Rather than advising against eating the airplane, however, author Peter Pearson details the steps one must take in arranging a dinner party, where the reader and his or her guests will eat the airplane. If eating an airplane is to be done, it should be done properly.

This picture book is rife with wordplay (“Be sure that you have knives, spoons, and forklifts,”) a feature that delighted my children. There are also groan-worthy puns and jokes for the Dad joke demographic. The fun-loving illustrations (by Mircea Catusana) are a perfect match for the text. And even though the book might be described as absurd, it’s actually based on a true story (see the author’s note.) The back matter gives interesting facts about airplanes, giving the picture book a very complete feel. It’s a book that my kids keep coming back to.

]]>http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/11/22/how-to-eat-an-airplane-by-peter-pearson/feed/0Writing Review – April 2016http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/04/30/writing-review-april-2016/
http://www.joshuamhammond.com/2016/04/30/writing-review-april-2016/#commentsSat, 30 Apr 2016 22:11:56 +0000http://www.joshuamhammond.com/?p=1855[Read more...]]]>After graduating in January, I spent the remainder of my paternity leave (a couple weeks in January) working on a revision of my middle grade novel. Then I went back to work, and the writing slowed down quite a bit. A well-timed weekend writing retreat at the beginning of April was just the kick in the pants I needed. We set writing goals, and now it’s time to report on my progress.

Writing (like a boss.)

Days Writing: 18

Okay, that’s 18 out of 30, good for 60% of the month. Not bad, but I think I can do better.

Words Written: 17,372

Hey, not bad. That’s about a third of a middle grade novel.

Words Per Session: 965

I’ll take it. I didn’t really have any marathon sessions this month. I was pretty consistently around this number each day.

Blog Posts: 3 (counting this one)

This is much higher than my usual output.

The Secret to My Success: Coffee

Seriously, it’s the only thing that got me out of bed at 5:00 AM to write. Without coffee, I’d be nowhere. Thanks, coffee.

Project: Draft 3 of my Middle Grade Novel

It’s probably more like draft 3.5. Anyway, my first two drafts were written as an epistolary, and now I’m trying my hand at taking it out of that form. I’ve added a couple new storylines, so it’s spiraling out of control a little bit, clocking in at 39,206 words as I get into Act III. I’m going to have to do a lot of cutting in my next round of revisions. My last draft was 50,706 words, which I think is a good number for this novel. I’m going to eclipse that in a big way, so I’ll have to break out the hacksaw in the next round.

Goals for May: Finish this Draft!

I want to actually finish this draft and do another major revision in May. My next pass will be mostly cutting, I believe (and hope,) so it probably won’t take as long as drafting round has taken. Then, by June, I hope to be at the point of line editing.

I want it to be in tip-top shape by summer so that I can begin the soul-crushing process of querying agents. Stay tuned.

Hello, and welcome to Day 2 of the Front Row’s Blogging Series. The topic: Where I Write. Hopefully you enjoyed Sarah’s post yesterday.

I’m excited about this series because I love to see writer spaces, and even though I know my Front Row people very well, I haven’t seen all of their writing spaces. Basically, I have two spaces that I use more or less regularly, and one that I aspire to use someday.

The Library

The quiet section of the library is a good place to write.

When I was in my MFA program at Hamline, I typically did most of my writing at the library. My writing packets would get hammered out on the weekends, and I rarely did any work on weekdays. It was the only way I could escape my children. I love them very much, but it’s hard to write when they’re around. I did bring my eldest daughter with me a few times. We would hit the Starbucks across the street and carry our warm drinks over to the Quiet Section of the library. My daughter was pretty good about reading silently, only interrupting me a few times to whisper-read the funny parts of her book. I can usually concentrate on writing once I’m there, though I do get interrupted sometimes by whispered greetings from current or former students (the peril of living in the town in which I teach.)

I love the library. I love librarians. I especially love children’s librarians. My kids do all of the reading programs and earn patches to sew on to their library bags. They ask the librarians for help when they’re looking for something in particular. And the librarians are always patient and gracious. Support your local library, people (I did, recently, by voting for a funding referendum. Also, I pay library fines a lot, because, reasons.)

I haven’t done writing in this way in quite some time (maybe since I graduated.) Mostly it’s because my wife had to get her book edits done, so I watched the girls on the weekends so she could write. Now that she’s done, I can maybe go back to writing for three-hour stretches on the weekend.

These days, most of my writing happens here.

The Desktop Computer in the Formal Living Room

Not to brag or anything, but our new house has a formal living room that is different than the family room where the TV is. The formal living room has a fireplace, bookshelves, a piano, and my desk. We bought a sofa and two chairs and we try to keep our children from destroying them in the way that children destroy things because they hate having nice things (“Oh, this couch is great for doing sick jumps on.”)

Theoretically, the formal living room has the perfect aesthetic for writing. The room lacks doors, however, so it’s not always easy to writing there when the kids are in the house. So my solution has been this: I get up at 5:00 AM and write while the kids are asleep. There are things I like about being at the desktop computer – a real keyboard, for example. Also, I have my copy of Scrivener on there. I don’t use it a ton, but it is helpful for organizing my story notes (I do my drafting with Google Docs.)

It’s not a bad place to write, but it needs better lighting and a better chair. I don’t want to straight-up put a desk chair in the living room, though. I’m far too classy for that. I’ve been doing the majority of my writing from this spot for the last few months. I will usually get in about ninety minutes of writing before work, and the word count varies but usually falls between 600 and 1,200 words.

The Holy Grail will be to knock out 5,000 words during the work week and then add a couple thousand more during the weekend. I’m not there yet, but I’m hoping to get into that kind of routine.

I never write here. But I could.

The Aspirational Bedroom Desk

I thought that maybe I could do some writing upstairs in my bedroom when the kids are at home. We don’t have an office. So we bought a desk, chair, and a lamp. I have my Periodic Table of Figures of Speech!

Don’t let the picture fool you. The chair has a broken caster, so sitting in it doesn’t really work all that well. I have never written at that desk. For one, I’d have to use my Chromebook, which is fine, but doesn’t give me access to Scrivener (and if I am at home, why not just go downstairs to the better computer?) Secondly, I just don’t really want to work in my bedroom. I don’t know why. I’ll let you know if I ever use the desk. I like it, though. Maybe if I ever get famous I can say I wrote my great American novel at the desk and then sell it for a million bajillion dollars.

Well, that’s it for me. Make sure you check back in this week as we hear from other members of The Front Row.

So, it looks like all of March went by without me posting to this blog. Classic me.

I have been writing, though. I’m still working on an overhaul of a middle grade novel. And while I know what I must do, actually sitting down to work on it can be daunting. Also, real life is constantly getting in the way – from work (Parent Teacher Conferences, Report Cards) to family (kids, man, always needing stuff,) to having to finally clean the house because it has become a source of stress.

With all of this other stuff going on, I wasn’t finding as much time for writing as I would have liked. Which is why our writing retreat to Sarah’s Boss Cabin couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I was reunited with my Hamline MFAC graduating class for a weekend of writing, something I desperately needed. We workshopped each other and we went all in, reading 50-100 pages and providing about an hour’s worth of feedback. There’s something incredibly energizing about working with people who speak your language (and it doesn’t hurt that everyone is super awesome and fun to boot.)

After providing feedback, Jennifer made us set a short-term goal for the writing weekend, and a long term goal for finishing our projects. Zack set up a spreadsheet so that we could track our word counts. We’ve been encouraging each other online. So far it’s worked for me. I’ve been getting up at five in the morning to get some words down before work.

It’s about a nine hour drive to the cabin for me, so I found an app that would read the google docs from my phone through my car stereo system. While it wasn’t perfect (it pronounced the word “pieces” as if we were in Italy – and my friends seemed to use that word a lot in their manuscripts,) it was a decent way to get the reading done. I was struck by how well-crafted each story was. My only quarrel with them was the fact that they weren’t yet finished. I wanted to know what happens next. I do believe that many of these manuscripts will eventually be published and out in the world, like Sarah’s book, Assassin’s Heart, which I of course forgot to bring so that it could be signed (I also forgot my fitbit and my freaking computer, which I stressed about until it turned out not to be a big deal at all – thanks Jen!)

The writing retreat was an absolute success, and I was reminded of how important community is for writers. Writing is hard, because you actually have to write. And a lot of times you will write stuff that goes nowhere. There’s no guarantee that anybody will publish what you write. But you do it anyway. Because you have to. Because you get itchy if you go too long without writing. It’s nice to have cheerleaders. Maybe essential.

It is also essential that I crush my friends with my word count. Let’s go get it.

I was reading in bed last night when I heard a strange splattering noise coming from my daughter’s bedroom. I ran in to find my middle daughter sitting in her sister’s IKEA desk chair with her pants around her ankles.

She was not awake.

Her body must have sensed the chair and thought, “good enough.” Some bad things were done to that chair.

“Honey, honey, this isn’t the bathroom.” Still not awake.

A brief cease fire, and I took the opportunity to whisk her into the bathroom. Just as I got in, and before I set her down, she made the tell-tale vomit sound. I turned her around and aimed her at the toilet (the seat was still down) and she fired from the other end. I’d say about 95% of it hit the target. After another round of vomiting, she was ready to fire out the other end again. A quick wipe of the seat (I was holding her with one arm the whole time) and I turned her around just in time.

Poor kid must have caught a stomach bug. There was no cleaning her up with toilet paper, so I started the shower. At some point she woke up and asked, “Why am I in the bathroom?”

“You got sick, honey. Time to take a shower.”

“Okay.”

While I got the middle child clean (and the other two girls slumbered on, thankfully,) Bromleigh took on the horrifying task of cleaning up the desk chair. She did what she could, man, but the seat of that desk chair is porous. The chair would be forever unclean. Pressing down on the seat always brought forth a new wave of horror. Always. So I took it out to the trash.

I can already imagine those smug childless people (the ones who chose to be that way and like to point it out a lot – #notallchildlesspeople) enjoying a certain amount of schadenfreude (“This is why I don’t have children,” or “Ooh, children are gross,) but I wasn’t the least bit put out by any of the events. Instead, I was consumed by love for my poor sick child; Bromleigh and I wanted to do everything we could to make it better for the kid. It’s a strange thing – perhaps you love them the most when they’re the most vulnerable.

As for the chair, it wasn’t by the trash can when I went out this morning. Someone must have thought, “Cool, free chair.”

I had a dream the other night that my nine-month old daughter died. She is my third daughter, and I’ve had this dream about the other two as well. It’s a completely jarring experience. In this most recent dream, Hattie died from an illness, and she was scheduled to see the pediatrician the very next day (thanks for that twist of the knife, subconscious.) The other lasting image was that of my older two girls playing outside, oblivious to the fate of their baby sister.

It’s not surprising that I had this dream. Hattie recently spent a night in the hospital with pneumonia. While concerned, my conscious self did not consider it a life or death matter. She was being monitored and taken care of by well-trained doctors. I am grateful for our proximity to health care; I am grateful for health insurance. My subconscious, however, turned my low-level anxiety into full-on dread.

A sick child need not be the catalyst for these nightmares, however. I am constantly living with the dread that something bad will happen to one of my children. It is unavoidable. The worst part of it is that I can take every precaution in the world, and bad things can still happen. I do my best to submerge those fears, but of course they can’t be held in check forever. Every once in a while they bubble up as nightmares that take several days (or weeks) to shake.

Dread is a parent’s constant companion. And from what I understand about my own parents (and in-laws,) it doesn’t go away when the kids grow up. I can’t watch the news anymore. I can’t deal with school shootings. I can’t deal with war, poverty, and our nation’s (maybe species’) deranged drive to annihilate ourselves. So I do what I can to mitigate those fears. I turn off the television. I play with the children. I read. I write.

For me, so far, and I say this with humble gratitude, my worst fears have not been realized. My children have been safe, and more or less healthy. But my dread understands that all of this can change in a blink of an eye: a car crash, disease, a person with a gun. Other parents have been made to confront their worst fears – tragedies that nobody would face in a just world. The randomness of it all is unsettling, and feeds the dread.

A few years ago, one of my coworkers came face to face with the fickle nature of this existence. His daughter was diagnosed with cancer. My coworker is one of the best people. His family is one of the best families. It wasn’t fair. Of course, it’s never fair. His daughter overcame her diagnosis, and my coworker dedicated himself to helping other families overcome cancer as well. He became involved with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a group dedicated to providing funding for research into childhood cancers.

I have agreed to help with this endeavor. I am raising money and will have my head shaved in front of hundreds of middle school students. For me, it’s just another way of fighting the parental dread. It’s one way to work towards a positive outcome. Finding a cure to cancer is possible.

When I examine my own parental dread, I fear the things I can’t control, like a drunk driver smashing into the car my kids are riding in. They are girls, so I fear toxic masculinity, which contributes to our rape culture and means that if my girls decline an amorous invitation they could lose their lives for it. I fear diseases that we don’t have cures for yet.

But I don’t fear polio, or measles, or smallpox. Childhood diseases that once menaced generations of parents are gone (as long as we continue to vaccinate our children.) I believe the same can be true of cancer. I would love it if we could eliminate it from the expansive list of things for parents to dread.

Dread is unavoidable if you’re a parent. But contributing to a just cause may help to mitigate some of those nagging fears.

Assassin’s Heart is a Young Adult fantasy about Lea Saldana, a seventeen year old assassin who belongs to the top family of assassins in Lovero. In total, there are nine families of assassins, and they are allowed to legally “clip” people because their city’s patron goddess is the goddess of Death and Resurrection. The families earn money for their jobs, and they provide a service as well. When they kill a person, they guarantee a rebirth for him or her; the alternative is that they would wander around as a ghost, angrily looking for a new body.

The families compete for jobs, and are rivals. So when Lea’s family is murdered by the Da Vias, she sets out on a path of vengeance. She intends to repay the Da Vias by murdering all of them, but she’ll need help. She travels to Yvain to find her disgraced uncle, Marcello.

Lea is a very skilled assassin, but the limits of her abilities are tested by assassin families, crooked lawmen, ghosts, and her stubborn uncle. The book is hard to put down when Lea is faced with challenge after challenge. She proves herself a capable protagonist – someone worth rooting for.

The world building in this story is incredible. Cities develop around a deity (and the gods and goddesses are active in the story) and the implications of that completely make sense. There are ghosts who kill people and try to take their bodies (something that has important implications for how the residents in the world order their lives.) Now, throw the political intrigue of nine rival assassin families into this world, and you’ve got a well textured story.

I keep thinking about the world in Assassin’s Heart, long after I’ve put the book down. For what it’s worth, I belong to the Zarella family, according to this quiz.